Elon Musk arrives in federal court in Oakland, California on April 30, 2026. Elon Musk invested in OpenAI early on, thinking it would be a nonprofit, but is now suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for allegedly cheating him into developing OpenAI into a for-profit company.
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Elon Musk And Sam Altman criticized each other in new articles on X, highlighting the billionaires’ long-standing fight over the evolution of OpenAI.
Musk and Altman helped launch OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research lab alongside a group of engineers and scientists.
In 2018, Musk left OpenAI’s board after donating tens of millions to the organization, although he later opposed Altman’s efforts to build “an opaque network of for-profit OpenAI affiliates” amid a crisis. trial who went to trial in California this year. A jury found in favor of Altman and Musk said he would appeal the case.
Musk’s relationship with Altman and OpenAI eroded after the Tesla and the CEO of SpaceX borrowed engineering staff from OpenAI to remake Tesla’s autopilot technology and poached AI researcher Andrej Karpathy from OpenAI. Musk lobbied OpenAI to give him full control and merge the lab with Tesla. Altman and other OpenAI board members pushed back against Musk, who stopped making promised contributions to OpenAI, leaving him in dire financial straits.
Weeks after the trial, Musk’s company SpaceX – which controls social platform IPO. SpaceX has raised a record $75 billion by promoting its plans to launch data centers into space, as well as its ambitions for enterprise AI applications and interplanetary transportation. Meanwhile, OpenAI has filed confidentially for its own IPO.
This week, SpaceX released the Grok 4.5 generative AI model, while OpenAI launched its own generative AI model. GPT-5.6 Ground. For days, Musk and Altman promoted their respective releases, but on Saturday the rivalry turned personal. Earlier, Musk pursued both Apple and OpenAI, alleging they engaged in anticompetitive practices that left Grok lower in app store rankings than other chatbots and AI image generators.
SpaceX has sought to expand into AI coding with its $60 billion equity investment. cursor acquisitionwhich it plans to close in the third quarter following a regulatory review. The deal would help SpaceX compete with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, which quickly write application source code.
In response to a post Apple filed a complaint against OpenAI on Friday for alleged theft trade secrets, Musk wrote“The Altman scam strikes again…”
THE Tesla and the CEO of SpaceX has used the nickname “Scam Altman” to refer to the CEO of OpenAI several times over the past year. A few minutes after his message, Musk doublewriting: “He takes scamming to a whole new level.”
Next, Musk posted a photo by Altman which included the words: “I do this because I love it”.
“By ‘this’ he means a scam,” Musk wrote, including two laughing emojis rolling on the ground.
Musk then replied to this post, writing: “He could literally enjoy scamming more than any human being alive!”
The whirlwind of social activity caught Altman’s attention.
“[H]“Oh my goodness, you’re the one selling short-term space data centers to public market investors,” Altman wrote in a statement. Message which has garnered over 11 million views.
“We’ll start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves,” Musk said. retaliated.
Separately, Altman placed Musk’s new wave of attention in the context of the new version of OpenAI’s model.
“[T]“Here are plenty of reference points that suggest the 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to know is that Elon is obsessed with me again,” Altman wrote. on.
Elsewhere on X, the account @iliketeslas claimed that Altman was afraid of Apple. This also prompted a response from Altman.
“[I] I’m not afraid of apples, but I have immense respect for them. S-level company”, Altman wrote.
Altman’s message led X product manager Nikita Bier to answer: “Amazing trade secrets too, some of the best.”
Musk replied with a face emoji with tears of joy.
On Friday, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC”We are not interested in the trade secrets of other companies.”
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
WATCH: Elon Musk loses his legal battle against Sam Altman and OpenAI
